


This Other Eden

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [15]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Acceptance, Battle of Bosworth Field, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Reincarnation, Sad with a Happy Ending, Shakespearean style language, Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 02:15:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12223677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: A case takes John and Sherlock to Leicester, where each visits the final memories of Richard III. It's not easy, to see the places where the soul of the man you love (the body of the man you once were) died a brutal death. But there can be healing in it, too.





	This Other Eden

**Author's Note:**

> I visited Leicester very recently, to pay my respects to Richard. This story resulted.
> 
> This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,  
> This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,  
> This other Eden, demi-paradise,  
> This fortress built by Nature for herself  
> Against infection and the hand of war,  
> This happy breed of men, this little world,  
> This precious stone set in the silver sea,  
> Which serves it in the office of a wall  
> Or as a moat defensive to a house,  
> Against the envy of less happier lands,--  
> This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.  
> ~ "The LIfe and Death of Richard II", William Shakespeare

Nothing would have taken them idly back to Leicester.

 _His_ bones lay there after all: the mortal remains of Richard-that-was – the first life that led to the many lives that led to John Watson, who had sought the soul of his beloved, Khan-now-Sherlock. Those bones, discovered bound in a pitiful grave beneath a slab of concrete, were now buried deep beneath a block of alabaster. A prettier and less despised grave, but no less dead for all that, and so brutally come to his end, too.

That these abused bones were now buried here in a quiet grave was the cause of secret and unreasoning grief for one; nought but a curious fact to the other.

But a case gainsays almost all other things, in the life of Sherlock Holmes and his John Watson, and thus they took themselves to that city of football and a dead king.

However, what had seemed perplexing from the hundred miles distance of London was simplicity itself _in situ_. Sherlock saw one man’s new haircut and a small scar on the wrong side of an identical brother’s face. He discovered the sudden change of temperament and consequent surrender of his dog to a shelter. Shoes slightly ill-fitting, a belt’s crease demonstrating it was one notch tighter.

The conclusion that one twin had done away with another to take over his life and fortune was inescapable. The wife of the dead twin had not only known but colluded, having decided that long ago she’d married the wrong brother.

Sherlock found them out. The dead twin was unearthed and identified, and his widow and brother were arrested.

Sherlock had to endure the tedium of making a full statement to the local police, and was less than amused when John excused himself for the duration.

“I didn’t do anything to report,” John said, “I didn’t even have to wrestle anyone into submission. I’ll meet you back at the hotel later.”

If Sherlock read any of John’s intent, he said nothing. He had intentions of his own.

After despatching the tiresome i-dotting, Sherlock strolled into Leicester. A return to their hotel room was rendered unappealing by the lack of John within.

Instead, Sherlock steeled himself to satisfy curiosity, and went to St Martins.

On one side of the St Martins, opposite park benches, small shrubs, a garden of reclaimed gravestones - and a statue that looked nothing like his love - gold lettering on a white wall led into the Centre.

Respectfully meant, Sherlock supposed, though it was the place where modern strangers debated the virtues or otherwise of his John’s old soul. His Richard.

 _Ridiculous._ The Richard examined here had been a bloody tyrant. Cruel and full of spite, to spite those who had mocked and used him all his life; to be a worse monster than even the monster they perceived him to be.

The part of Sherlock that had been Khan knew, soul deep, both monster and man. Had shared his path. Been in a measure responsible for it. And loved him fiercely, former wickedness and all.

Sherlock was _fine_ , and he wondered why he’d been so afraid to come here ( _not afraid. Why ‘afraid’? All of it, **ridiculous**_ ).

Until he reached the broken plastic bones which stood for Richard’s. Until he saw the sculpted twists mirroring those of Richard’s spine. Until he brought forth the report of the death blows to his Richard’s body, his skull. The details of post-mortem blows delivered to make sure the brute was dead.

The exhibit reported, clinical, without feeling, the wounds visited on Richard’s naked remains. Blows designed to humiliate the corpse of a reviled and defenceless man – Richard’s body yet the object of such fear and loathing. The blows of gauntlet and spur on dead flesh were no longer in evidence, but the bladed cuts to pelvis, limbs, head, could still be read on Richard’s bones.

Sherlock found he was looking for evidence of the other scar.

_John was shot. The bone broken. The wound infected. This skeleton should be marred here, here, here, with the proof of that near-slaughter. He nearly died. My love nearly died before he found me._

But this was Richard, not John. 500 years dead.

_But not dead enough for you, his well-earned enemies. He had not suffered enough yet for you. And though he and I know Richard was undeserving of your pity; he was **dead** and could no more harm you; he could no more harm himself. And yet you had to stab his poor body, which I had loved in that glade. You had to display it like so much spoiled meat, to jeer at what you thought misshapen, at what you thought signified his spirit. You were so afraid of the monster you helped to make of him, and he was not dead enough for you._

Perhaps this was hypocrisy, but Sherlock did not love _them_.

Suddenly angry, Sherlock swept from the sight of Richard’s ignominy and suffering. He stalked across the square and into the cathedral, to see it for himself.

Richard’s resting place.

Pale alabaster, the stone over Richard’s grave was simply carved. The natural flaw running through it – a darker line, a crack like that which a sword had made in his thigh – was kinder than the flaws in the man had been. Sherlock’s hand trembled as he traced the line of the break with his fingertips; ran them across the edge of the cold stone.

Underneath, buried deep. His love.

_No. This is Richard’s body. His soul lives on. John **lives**. He is well, and so all is well. This grief is centuries old, and less for his death than for the suffering that brought him to it. _

He held his breath.

_Oh. Oh. That is why. That is what makes my throat close up and my heart pound. Richard internalised their mockery of his body. Suffering twisted him into rage; but for those ten days of ours in the glade, he suffered, and made others suffer too. He endured that death and then lives and deaths for centuries after, suffering in each one so that he could meet me coming the other way._

_We each deserved our fates. We each chose to redeem our monstrous selves. I can accept the suffering I chose all those lives ago as the necessary price to find him again. But **his** suffering? Even though he chose it to find me too? The knowledge of his suffering is hard to bear. Even that of my John, shot and nearly dead before he could come to London, to where I waited for him.  _

At that moment, beyond the cathedral walls, the sun broke free of northern clouds. Light came beaming down through stained glass, and bathed the alabaster tomb in rainbows. Rich blues and royal reds, gleaming gold and lush green, regal purple and sunlit orange. A pageant of colour for the body of a brute who had redeemed himself in life after life after life, to be worthy of reunion with the one who held his heart.

And so Richard had become. He had, through suffering, burned his past. Become a better man. He had found his Khan in Sherlock, who had suffered and burned too, in order to find his soulmate.

Sherlock’s fingers trailed the edge of the grave. He held his pale palm to that brilliant painted light. Closed his hand as if to hold it; pressed the memory of that vibrant colour to his chest, over his heart.

John was not in that tomb. Even Richard was not beneath that alabaster seal. Here were only bones and dust. Only the memory of a man who had done evil deeds. The Richard who had repented, who suffered and became redeemed, was not down there in the darkness where neither sunlight nor Sherlock’s weeping (nor Khan’s) could reach him.

Sherlock pulled his coat tight around his body, tucked down his chin and strode away, knowing suddenly and at once where he would find his heart, who lived and breathed still, and was waiting for him.

*

In a meadow close to the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre, John looked up the hill at the tall figure who gracefully flicked his coat tails back and scaled the low fence. The sky had cleared from scudding grey clouds to bright blue, though the wind blew high, heroically unfurling the Plantagenet and Tudor banners on their flagpoles above a monument – the disputed crown caught upon a sundial.

None of those things had brought John to this meadow, half an hour’s drive from Leicester. Only his own curiosity had brought him here.

John watched Sherlock march determinedly down the grassy slope. He tilted up his chin when Sherlock drew close and reached to cradle his face.

“I visited his new grave. You’re not there at all,” Sherlock murmured.

“I’m _here_ ,” agreed John. He wrapped his arms around Sherlock and pulled him close, thighs and bellies and chests and mouths together.

They kissed, melding each to the other with lip and tongue. They murmured low sighs of contentment to be thus reconnected with warmth and breath, heartbeat against heartbeat. They kissed their gladness to the sound of birds in the trees; the snapping of the banners atop the hill; the distant hum of cars on country roads.

Sherlock’s lips brushed against John’s cheek and temple, settled close to his ear. “You’re standing where it happened,” he said quietly, half question, half knowing the answer.

John shifted to show Sherlock the grass under their feet. “This used to be a marsh. My. Richard’s. Our horse became trapped in the mud. Lord Stanley chose Henry Tudor. Richard Plantagenet fell on Bosworth Field. Right here.  On this very spot.” _This is where I died._

Sherlock’s hands clutched convulsively at John’s, a sudden spasm, as he stared at unsullied grass growing lush in this field.

“I know being here upsets you,” continued John gently, “but this is where who we are now began. I died, and my soul began to search for you at once. I… think I remember that.”

He remembered a lot of things, standing in this green field. The clash of steel, the cries of men, the smell of the marsh, of sweat, of shit, of guts, of blood. He remembered dying here, face down in the scarlet mud, heedless of the pain, grateful for release.

He remembered whispering into the pool of his own blood: “Beloved, oh my Khan, my prince. I will find thee.  I will pay whatever price is asked, and purge myself of hate, if fate will let me come to thee. I will find thee, my love, I will, I will, I will. Oh please, my starlit prince, my only joy, my hope, let me find thee.”

The soil under John’s feet had grown fertile on the blood of men, Richard’s own princely measure included.

Sherlock’s eyes were wet. The tears spilled over his cheeks and he shook his head, angry with his grief.

“Shh, love.” John swept up Sherlock’s sorrow with his thumbs, his palms. He soft-kissed his prince. He drew his beloved close, and down, until they knelt on the sweet grass together.

“He was a brute, but we are redeemed, Richard and I. You and Khan. We prayed for it as we died: not ‘God, let me live’, but ‘Fate, let me find him. I will suffer anything you ask, only let me find him’.  Fate was kind. I suffered willingly, and so did you, and here we are. Ssh, now.”

On the grass of England, grown green on Richard’s blood, they kissed again, the first desperate crush of it, as though fearing loss was near at hand again, softening to assurance. _He is here, he is here, and we will not be parted again._

After assurance softened to sweetness; after sweetness heated again to passion; when passion had transformed into joy that all these griefs were past indeed, then they concluded their devout kissing and rose. Hand in hand, they left that ancient battlefield where Richard had first stepped into the future to find redemption, and his heart.

Before they caught their train back to London, they passed through St Martins once more. John waited while Sherlock placed white roses at the feet of Richard’s statue.

“He doesn’t look anything like you,” Sherlock muttered at the statue.

“He does a bit,” said John.

“I suppose he does. A bit.”

“He’s got my arse.”

That made Sherlock laugh. Scant hours later in Baker Street, Sherlock tested that hypothesis with eye, hand, tongue and prick, while John sent new wordless cries heavenward and spent himself with dizzy pleasure on the duvet.

*

The river flowed about them as Khan held his Richard’s bent back against his strong chest, and bathed his love. His large hands spilled cascades of clear water over Richard’s throat and chest and belly. He smoothed long fingers over Richard’s ribs and hips, slid them through tight-curled hair and cupped Richard’s swelling prick in the palm of his hand.

Richard, more content than aroused – yet aroused too – tilted his head against Khan’s shoulder and gazed at the stars as though he loved it as well as he loved his Khan.

“You are well, love?” Khan asked, before kissing his neck.

“I am well,” Richard agreed, “For I am with thee, and therefore I cannot be ill.”

“Our other selves were much moved today.”

“Aye. My Sherlock grieves for my suffering. As I have grieved for thine. These ends to which we willingly came, came yet at a hard price.” Richard’s good hand folded over Khan’s, which rested on his chest. “I understand him, though. If I knew how I might have spared thee pain, I would have taken any risk for it.”

“I’d have spared you too, my love, except that it was necessary. Our suffering was all that could lead us here, and we chose it.”

“Aye. And yet.”

“And yet,” agreed Khan. He held Richard closer and rocked him gently. “'Twas hard to see the ground on which you died. I wished my other self had knelt closer down, so that we could sift that earth, which drank the last of your life, through our fingers.”

“You would not have found me there. I am but earth now in that England which I left. The best of me is here in our glade with you. Just as I look to the stars, where I know your own beloved body was dispersed. I sometimes look upon the velvet night and see your tomb, your precious self, scattered star dust across heaven.”

“I suppose our bodies are the matter of heaven and earth, then, and of no more consequence.”

“Tis fit. We are England, we are this firmament above, and we are fresh born into this, our other Eden, our dreaming life. New born not innocent, but wise.”

Khan’s warm, large hands resumed the caress of his Richard’s body. “Yes. Born again, into our perfection.” He kissed Richard’s bent back, his withered arm, his shoulders, throat, jaw, cheek.

Richard arched into each touch; he part-turned to kiss his Khan’s sweet mouth.

“My earth, your sky, kiss at the horizon. But we are men, and I have a fancy to mount thee. Or be mounted.” Richard’s grin was devilish wicked. “A more perfect consummation than horizons can provide, at any rate.” He nipped at Khan’s jaw and squeezed his love’s prick and licked a pebbling nipple before, laughing his earthy joy, Richard stood apart, chin high. The slightness and unevenness of his form did not overshadow his warrior strength, his regal poise, his spirited and playful confidence.

Khan pounced, making Richard roar with laughter as he was scooped up and carried to shore like a revered and glittering prize.

Yet debauching was delayed while Khan laid his Richard upon the grassy glade and kissed him most thoroughly, from instep to crown. Soft presses of lips, open-mouthed kisses, suckling delights and most sweet dabs on beloved skin. Only Richard knew that the most tender kisses were placed upon those Bosworth wounds, on his leg and arm and skull. Gentler yet were the ones his Khan gifted to the wounds made when Richard had been beyond feeling them.

Where once fear and disgust had brutalised his already senseless form, Khan devoted his love. Whatever wounds had been earned and deserved, that Richard’s body had been precious to his Khan, as his soul was also precious.

“Oh, my angel,” Richard whispered, his strong hand stroking Khan’s face, Khan’s hair trailing through his fingers. “Our ends brought us to our beginnings. I am here.”

Khan kissed Richard’s mouth sweetly, softly, with tender longing and a tender melancholy too.

“I know. I know.”

Melancholy gave way then to purest delight, to wonder and elation, as Khan’s mouth wrote a sonnet upon his Richard’s body. Poetry and rhythm, the rhyming couplet of first one nipple then the other, the lines of love writ in nipping teeth and sucking mouth.

Khan held Richard’s body close in his lap and nuzzled the verse of his abiding adoration into Richard’s offered throat and thrust deep into Richard’s body. Richard clutched him tight in turn, urging Khan to greater passion with his imprecations, pushing down to meet each thrust, his ardour as hot, his devotion as profound. Richard’s kingly prick rubbed hard against Khan’s smooth belly as Khan held him near, and each reached this love song’s loud conclusion within moments of the other.  

After, Richard lay on his back, his aspect, fierce in life, now wreathed in bliss as he petted Khan’s hair. Khan, head on Richard’s chest, gazed over the landscape of his love’s naked body, each rise and fall a work of art to him. An isle unto itself, a precious stone, his heart's realm, his Richard.

 

**Author's Note:**

> You may like to [ read my blog posts about visiting Bosworth and Richard's remains](http://www.narrellemharris.com/the-lady-novelist-travels/the-lady-novelist-pays-her-respects-to-king-richard-iii-part-1/) in Leicester.


End file.
